t come here, or don't want to come, so they send robots out here to represent them." "You have a lot of visitors?" "Some. Mostly the representatives I was telling you about. But there are some that are on the lam. I'd take it, mister, you are on the lam." Richard Daniel didn't answer. "It's all right," the ancient one assured him. "We don't mind at all, just so you behave yourself. Some of our most prominent citizens, they came here on the lam." "That is fine," said Richard Daniel. "And how about yourself? You must be on the lam as well." "You mean this body. Well, that's a little different. This here is punishment." "Punishment?' "Well, you see, I was the foreman of the cargo warehouse and I got to goofing off. So they hauled me up and had a trial and they found me guilty. Then they stuck me into this old body and I have to stay in it, at this lousy job, until they get another criminal that needs punishment. They can't punish no more than one criminal at a time because this is the only old body that they have. Funny thing about this body. One of the boys went back to Earth on a business trip and found this old heap of metal in a junkyard and brought it home with him - for a joke, I guess. Like a human might buy a skeleton for a joke, you know." He took a long, sly look at Richard Daniel. "It looks to me, stranger, as if your body..." But Richard Daniel didn't let him finish. "I take it," Richard Daniel said, "you haven't many criminals." "No," said the ancient robot sadly, "we're generally a pretty solid lot." Richard Daniel reached out to pick up the key, but the ancient robot put out his hand and covered it. "Since you are on the lam," he said, "it'll be payment in advance." "I'll pay you for a week," said Richard Daniel, handing him some money. The robot gave him back his change. "One thing I forgot to tell you. You'll have to get plasticated." "Plasticated?" "That's right. Get plastic squirted over you. To protect you from the atmosphere. It plays hell with metal. There's a place next door will do it." "Thanks. I'll get it done immediately." "It wears off," warned the ancient one. "You have to get a new job every week or so." Richard Daniel took the key and went down the corridor until he found his numbered cubicle. He unlocked the door and stepped inside. The room was small, but clean. It had a desk and chair and that was all it had. He stowed his attachments bag in one corner and sat down in the chair and tried to feel at home. But he couldn't feel at home, and that was a funny thing - he'd just rented himself a home. He sat there, thinking back, and tried to whip up some sense of triumph at having done so well in covering his tracks. He couldn't. Maybe this wasn't the place for him, he thought. Maybe he'd be happier on some other planet. Perhaps he should go back to the ship and get on it once again and have a look at the next planet coming up. If he hurried, he might make it. But he'd have to hurry, for the ship wouldn't stay longer than it took to unload the consignment for this place and take on new cargo. He got up from the chair, still only half decided. And suddenly he remembered how, standing in the swirling mistiness, he had seen the ship as a diagram rather than a ship, and as he thought about it, something clicked inside his brain and he leaped toward the door. For now he knew what had been wrong with the spaceship's diagram - an injector valve was somehow out of kilter, he had to get back there before the ship took off again. He went through the door and down the corridor. He caught sight of the ancient robot's startled face as he ran across the lobby and out into the street. Pounding steadily toward the spaceport, he tried to get the diagram into his mind again, but it would not come complete - it came in bits and pieces, but not all of it. And even as be fought for the entire diagram, he heard the beginning take-off rumble. "Wait!" he yelled. "Wait for me! You can't..." There was a flash that turned the world pure white and a mighty invisible wave came swishing out of nowhere and sent him reeling down the street, falling as he reeled. He was skidding on the cobblestones and sparks were flying as his metal scraped along the stone. The whiteness reached a brilliance that almost blinded him and then it faded swiftly and the world was dark. He brought up against a wall of some sort, clanging as he hit, and he lay there, blind from the brilliance of the flash, while his mind went scurrying down the trail of the diagram. The diagram, he thought - why should he have seen a diagram of the ship he'd ridden through space, a diagram that had shown an injector out of whack? And how could he, of all robots, recognize an injector, let alone know there was something wrong with it. It had been a joke back home, among the Barringtons, that he, a mechanical thing himself, should have no aptitude at all for mechanical contraptions. And he could have saved those people and the ship - he could have saved them all if he'd immediately recognized the significance of the diagram. But he'd been too slow and stupid and now they all were dead. The darkness had receded from his eyes and he could see again and he got slowly to his feet, feeling himself all over to see how badly he was hurt. Except for a dent or two, he seemed to be all right. There were robots running in the street, heading for the spaceport, where a dozen fires were burning and where sheds and other structures had been flattened by the blast. Someone tugged at his elbow and he turned around. It was the ancient robot. "You're the lucky one," the ancient robot said. "You got off it just in time." Richard Daniel nodded dumbly and had a terrible thought: What if they should think he did it? He had gotten off the ship; he had admitted that he was on the lam; he had rushed out suddenly, just a few seconds before the ship exploded. It would be easy to put it all together - that he had sabotaged the ship, then at the last instant had rushed out, remorseful, to undo what he had done. On the face of it, it was damning evidence. But it was all right as yet, Richard Daniel told himself. For the ancient robot was the only one that knew - he was the only one he'd talked to, the only one who even knew that he was in town. There was a way, Richard Daniel thought - there was an easy way. He pushed the thought away, but it came back. You are on your own, it said. You are already beyond the law. In rejecting human law, you made yourself an outlaw. You have become fair prey. There is just one law for you - self preservation. But there are robot laws, Richard Daniel argued. There are laws and courts in this community. There is a place for justice. Community law, said the leech clinging in his brain, provincial law, little more than tribal law - and the stranger's always wrong. Richard Daniel felt the coldness of the fear closing down upon him and he knew, without half thinking, that the leech was right. He turned around and started down the street, heading for the transients barracks. Something unseen in the street caught his foot and he stumbled and went down. He scrabbled to his knees, hunting in the darkness on the cobblestones for the thing that tripped him. It was a heavy bar of steel, some part of the wreckage that had been hurled this far. He gripped it by one end and arose. "Sorry," said the ancient robot. "You have to watch your step." And there was a faint implication in his word - a hint of something more than the words had said, a hint of secret gloating in a secret knowledge. You have broken other laws, said the leech in Richard Daniel's brain. What of breaking just one more? Why, if necessary, not break a hundred more. It is all or nothing. Having come this far, you can't afford to fail. You can allow no one to stand in your way now. The ancient robot half turned away and Richard Daniel lifted up the bar of steel, and suddenly the ancient robot no longer was a robot, but a diagram. There, with all the details of a blueprint, were all the working parts, all the mechanism of the robot that walked in the street before him. And if one detached that single bit of wire, if one burned out that coil, if - Even as he thought it, the diagram went away and there was the robot, a stumbling, failing robot that clanged on the cobblestones. Richard Daniel swung around in terror, looking up the street, but there was no one near. He turned back to the fallen robot and quietly knelt beside him. He gently put the bar of steel down into the street. And he felt a thankfulness - for, almost miraculously, he had not killed. The robot on the cobblestones was motionless. When Richard Daniel lifted him, he dangled. And yet he was all right. All anyone had to do to bring him back to life was to repair whatever damage had been done his body. And that served the purpose, Richard Daniel told himself, as well as killing would have done. He stood with the robot in his arms, looking for a place to hide him. He spied an alley between two buildings and darted into it. One of the buildings, he saw, was set upon stone blocks sunk into the ground, leaving a clearance of a foot or so. He knelt and shoved the robot underneath the building. Then he stood up and brushed the dirt and dust from his body. Back at the barracks and in his cubicle, he found a rag and cleaned up the dirt that he had missed. And, he thought hard. He'd seen the ship as a diagram and, not knowing what it meant, hadn't done a thing. Just now he'd seen the ancient robot as a diagram and had most decisively and neatly used that diagram to save himself from murder - from the murder that he was fully ready to commit. But how had he done it? And the answer seemed to be that be really had done nothing. He'd simply thought that one should detach a single wire, burn out a single coil - he'd thought it and it was done. Perhaps he'd seen no diagram at all. Perhaps the diagram was no more than some sort of psychic rationalization to mask whatever he had seen or sensed. Seeing the ship and robot with the surfaces stripped away from them and their purpose and their function revealed fully to his view, he had sought some explanation of his strange ability, and his subconscious mind had devised an explanation, an analogy that, for the moment, had served to satisfy him. Like when he'd been in hyperspace, he thought. He'd seen a lot of things out there he had not understood. And that was it, of course, he thought excitedly. Something had happened to him out in hyperspace. Perhaps there'd been something that had stretched his mind. Perhaps he'd picked up some sort of new dimension-seeing, some new twist to his mind. He remembered how, back on the ship again, with his mind wiped clean of all the glory and the knowledge, he had felt like weeping. But now he knew that it had been much too soon for weeping. For although the glory and the knowledge (if there'd been a knowledge) had been lost to him, be had not lost everything. He'd gained a new perceptive device and the ability to use it somewhat fumblingly - and it didn't really matter that he still was at a loss as to what he did to use it. The basic fact that he possessed it and could use it was enough to start with. Somewhere out in front there was someone calling - someone, he now realized, who had been calling for some little time.... "Hubert, where are you? Hubert, are you around? Hubert..." Hubert? Could Hubert be the ancient robot? Could they have missed him already? Richard Daniel jumped to his feet for an undecided moment, listening to the calling voice. And then sat down again. Let them call, he told himself. Let them go out and hunt. He was safe in this cubicle. He had rented it and for the moment it was home and there was no one who would dare break in upon him. But it wasn't home. No matter how hard he tried to tell himself it was, it wasn't. There wasn't any home. Earth was home, he thought. And not all of Earth, but just a certain street and that one part of it was barred to him forever. It had been barred to him by the dying of a sweet old lady who had outlived her time; it had been barred to him by his running from it. He did not belong on this planet, he admitted to himself, nor on any other planet. He belonged on Earth, with the Barringtons, and it was impossible for him to be there. Perhaps, he thought, he should have stayed and let them reorient him. He remembered what the lawyer had said about memories that could become a burden and a torment. After all, it might have been wiser to have started over once again. For what kind of future did he have, with his old outdated body, his old outdated brain? The kind of body that they put a robot into on this planet by way of punishment. And the kind of brain - but the brain was different, for he had something now that made up for any lack of more modern mental tools. He sat and listened, and he heard the house - calling all across the light years of space for him to come back to it again. And he saw the faded living room with all its vanished glory that made a record of the years. He remembered, with a twinge of hurt, the little room back of the kitchen that had been his very own. He arose and paced up and down the cubicle - three steps and turn, and then three more steps and turn for another three. The sights and sounds and smells of home grew close and wrapped themselves about him and he wondered wildly if he might not have the power, a power accorded him by the universe of hyperspace, to will himself to that familiar street again. He shuddered at the thought of it, afraid of another power, afraid that it might happen. Afraid of himself, perhaps, of the snarled and tangled being he was - no longer the faithful, shining servant, but a sort of mad thing that rode outside a spaceship, that was ready to kill another being, that could face up to the appalling sweep of hyperspace, yet cowered before the impact of a memory. What he needed was a walk, he thought. Look over the town and maybe go out into the country. Besides, he remembered, trying to become practical, he'd need to get that plastication job he had been warned to get. He went out into the corridor and strode briskly down it and was crossing the lobby when someone spoke to him. "Hubert," said the voice, "just where have you been? I've been waiting hours for you." Richard Daniel spun around and a robot sat behind the desk. There was another robot leaning in a corner and there was a naked robot brain lying on the desk. "You are Hubert, aren't you", asked the one behind the desk. Richard Daniel opened up his mouth to speak, but the words refused to come. "I thought so," said the robot. "You may not recognize me, but my name is Andy. The regular man was busy, so the judge sent me. He thought it was only fair we make the switch as quickly as possible. He said you'd served a longer term than you really should. Figures you'd be glad to know they'd convicted someone else." Richard Daniel stared in horror at the naked brain lying on the desk. The robot gestured at the metal body propped into the corner. "Better than when we took you out of it," he said with a throaty chuckle. "Fixed it up and polished it and got out all the dents. Even modernized it some. Brought it strictly up to date. You'll have a better body than you had when they stuck you into that monstrosity." "I don't know what to say," said Richard Daniel, stammering. "You see, I'm not..." "Oh, that's all right," said the other happily. "No need for gratitude. Your sentence worked out longer than the judge expected. This just makes up for it." "I thank you, then," said Richard Daniel. "I thank you very much." And was astounded at himself, astonished at the ease with which he said it, confounded at his sly duplicity. But if they forced it on him, why should he refuse? There was nothing that he needed more than a modern body! It was still working out, he told himself. He was still riding luck. For this was the last thing that he needed to cover up his tracks. "All newly plasticated and everything," said Andy. "Hans did an extra special job." 'Well, then," said Richard Daniel, "let's get on with it." The other robot grinned. "I don't blame you for being anxious to get out of there. It must be pretty terrible to live in a pile of junk like that." He came around from behind the desk and advanced on Richard Danie1. "Over in the corner," he said, "and kind of prop yourself. I don't want you tipping over when I disconnect you. One good fall and that body'd come apart." "All right," said Richard Daniel. He went into the corner and leaned back against it and planted his feet solid so that he was propped. He had a rather awful moment when Andy disconnected the optic nerve and he lost his eyes and there was considerable queasiness in having his skull lifted off his shoulders and he was in sheer funk as the final disconnections were being swiftly made. Then he was a blob of greyness without a body or a head or eyes or anything at all. He was no more than a bundle of thoughts all wrapped around themselves like a pail of worms and this pail of worms was suspended in pure nothingness. Fear came to him, a taunting, terrible fear. What if this were just a sort of ghastly gag? What if they'd found out who he really was and what he'd done to Hubert? What if they took his brain and tucked it away somewhere for a year or two - or for a hundred years? It might be, he told himself, nothing more than their simple way of justice. He hung onto himself and tried to fight the fear away, but the fear ebbed back and forth like a restless tide. Time stretched out and out - far too long a time, far more time than one would need to switch a brain from one body to another. Although, he told himself, that might not be true at all. For in his present state he had no way in which to measure time. He had no external reference points by which to determine time. Then suddenly he had eyes. And he knew everything was all right. One by one his senses were restored to him and he was back inside a body and he felt awkward in the body, for he was unaccustomed to it. The first thing that he saw was his old and battered body propped into its corner and he felt a sharp regret at the sight of it and it seemed to him that he had played a dirty trick upon it. It deserved, he told himself, a better fate than this - a better fate than being left behind to serve as a shabby jailhouse on this outlandish planet. It had served him well for six hundred years and he should not be deserting it. But he was deserting it. He was, he told himself in contempt, becoming very expert at deserting his old friends. First the house back home and now his faithful body. Then he remembered something else - all that money in the body! "What's the matter, Hubert?" Andy asked. He couldn't leave it there, Richard Daniel told himself, for he needed it. And besides, if he left it there, someone would surely find it later and it would be a give-away. He couldn't leave it there and it might not be safe to forthrightly claim it. If he did, this other robot, this Andy, would think he'd been stealing on the job or running some side racket. He might try to bribe the other, but one could never tell how a move like that might go. Andy might be full of righteousness and then there'd be hell to pay. And, besides, he didn't want to part with any of the money. All at once he had it - he knew just what to do. And even as he thought it, he made Andy into a diagram. That connection there, thought Richard Daniel, reaching out his arm to catch the falling diagram that turned into a robot. He eased it to the floor and sprang across the room to the side of his old body. In seconds he had the chest safe open and the money safely out of it and locked inside his present body. Then he made the robot on the floor become a diagram again and got the connection back the way that it should be. Andy rose shakily off the floor. He looked at Richard Daniel in some consternation. "What happened to me?" he asked in a frightened voice. Richard Daniel sadly shook his head. "I don't know. You just keeled over. I started for the door to yell for help, then I heard you stirring and you were all right." Andy was plainly puzzled. "Nothing like this ever happened to me before," he said. "If I were you," counseled Richard Daniel, "I'd have myself checked over. You must have a faulty relay or a loose connection." "I guess I will," the other one agreed. "It's downright dangerous." He walked slowly to the desk and picked up the other brain, started with it toward the battered body leaning in the corner. Then he stopped and said: "Look, I forgot. I was supposed to tell you. You better get up to the warehouse. Another ship is on its way. It will be coming in any minute now." "Another one so soon?" "You know how it goes," Andy said, disgusted. "They don't even try to keep a schedule here. We won't see one for months and then there'll be two or three at once." "Well, thanks," said Richard Daniel, going out the door. He went swinging down the street with a newborn confidence. And he had a feeling that there was nothing that could lick him, nothing that could stop him. For he was a lucky robot! Could all that luck, he wondered, have been gotten out in hyperspace, as his diagram ability, or whatever one might call it, had come from hyperspace? Somehow hyperspace had taken him and twisted him and changed him, had molded him anew, had made him into a different robot than he had been before. Although, so far as luck was concerned, he had been lucky all his entire life. He'd had good luck with his human family and had gained a lot of favors and a high position and had been allowed to live for six hundred years. And that was a thing that never should have happened. No matter how powerful or influential the Barringtons had been, that six hundred years must be due in part to nothing but sheer 1uck. In any case, the luck and the diagram ability gave him a solid edge over all the other robots he might meet. Could it, he asked himself, give him an edge on Man as well? No - that was a thought he should not think, for it was blasphemous. There never was a robot that would be the equal of a man. But the thought kept on intruding and he felt not nearly so contrite over this leaning toward bad taste, or poor judgment, whichever it might be, as it seemed to him he should feel. As he neared the spaceport, he began meeting other robots and some of them saluted him and called him by the name of Hubert and others stopped and shook him by the hand and told him they were glad that he was out of pokey. This friendliness shook his confidence. He began to wonder if his luck would hold, for some of the robots, he was certain, thought it rather odd that he did not speak to them by name, and there had been a couple of remarks that he had some trouble fielding. He had a feeling that when he reached the warehouse he might be sunk without a trace, for he would know none of the robots there and he had not the least idea what his duties might include. And, come to think of it, he didn't even know where the warehouse was. He felt the panic building in him and took a quick involuntary look around, seeking some method of escape. For it became quite apparent to him that he must never reach the warehouse. He was trapped, he knew, and he couldn't keep on floating, trusting to his luck. In the next few minutes he'd have to figure something. He started to swing over into a side street, not knowing what he meant to do, but knowing he must do something, when he heard the mutter far above him and glanced up quickly to see the crimson glow of belching rocket tubes shimmering through the clouds. He swung around again and sprinted desperately for the spaceport and reached it as the ship came chugging down to a steady landing. It was, he saw, an old ship. It had no burnish to it and it was blunt and squat and wore a hangdog look. A tramp, he told himself, that knocked about from port to port, picking up whatever cargo it could, with perhaps now and then a paying passenger headed for some backwater planet where there was no scheduled service. He waited as the cargo port came open and the ramp came down and then marched purposefully out onto the field, ahead of the straggling cargo crew, trudging toward the ship. He had to act, he knew, as if he had a perfect right to walk into the ship as if he knew exactly what he might be doing. If there were a challenge he would pretend he didn't hear it and simply keep on going. He walked swiftly up the ramp, holding back from running, and plunged through the accordion curtain that served as an atmosphere control. His feet rang across the metal plating of the cargo hold until he reached the catwalk and plunged down it to another cargo level. At the bottom of the catwalk he stopped and stood tense, listening. Above him he heard the clang of a metal door and the sound of footsteps coming down the walk to the level just above him. That would be the purser or the first mate, he told himself, or perhaps the captain, coming down to arrange for the discharge of the cargo. Quietly he moved away and found a corner where he could crouch and hide. Above his head he heard the cargo gang at work, talking back and forth, then the screech of crating and the thump of bales and boxes being hauled out to the ramp. Hours passed, or they seemed like hours, as he huddled there. He heard the cargo gang bringing something down from one of the upper levels and he made a sort of prayer that they'd not come down to this lower level - and he hoped no one would remember seeing him come in ahead of them, or if they did remember, that they would assume that he'd gone out again. Finally it was over, with the footsteps gone. Then came the pounding of the ramp as it shipped itself and the banging of the port. He waited for long minutes, waiting for the roar that, when it came, set his head to ringing, waiting for the monstrous vibration that shook and lifted up the ship and flung it off the planet Then quiet came and he knew the ship was out of atmosphere and once more on its way. And knew he had it made. For now he was no more than a simple stowaway. He was no longer Richard Daniel, runaway from Earth. He'd dodged all the traps of Man, he'd covered all his tracks, and he was on his way. But far down underneath he had a jumpy feeling, for it all had gone too smoothly, more smoothly than it should. He tried to analyze himself, tried to pull himself in focus, tried to assess himself for what he bad become. He had abilities that Man had never won or developed or achieved, whichever it might be. He was a certain step ahead of not only other robots, but of Man as well. He had a thing, or the beginning of a thing, that Man had sought and studied and had tried to grasp for centuries and had failed. A solemn and a deadly thought: was it possible that it was the robots, after all, for whom this great heritage had been meant? Would it be the robots who would achieve the paranormal powers that Man had sought so long, while Man, perforce, must remain content with the materialistic and the merely scientific? Was he, Richard Daniel, perhaps, only the first of many? Or was it all explained by no more than the fact that he alone had been exposed to hyperspace? Could this ability of his belong to anyone who would subject himself to the full, uninsulated mysteries of that mad universe unconstrained by time? Could Man have this, and more, if he too should expose himself to the utter randomness of unreality? He huddled in his corner, with the thought and speculation stirring in his mind and he sought the answers, but there was no solid answer. His mind went reaching out, almost on its own, and there was a diagram inside his brain, a portion of a blueprint, and bit by bit was added to it until it all was there, until the entire ship on which he rode was there, laid out for him to see. He took his time and went over the diagram resting in his brain and he found little things - a fitting that was working loose and he tightened it, a printed circuit that was breaking down and getting mushy and be strengthened it and sharpened it and made it almost new, a pump that was leaking just a bit and he stopped its leaking. Some hundreds of hours later one of the crewmen found him and took him to the captain. The captain glowered at him. "Who are you?" he asked. "A stowaway," Richard Daniel told him. "Your name," said the captain, drawing a sheet of paper before him and picking up a pencil, "your planet of residence and owner." "I refuse to answer you," said Richard Daniel sharply and knew that the answer wasn't right, for it was not right and proper that a robot should refuse a human a direct command. But the captain did not seem to mind. He laid down the pencil and stroked his black beard slyly. "In that case," he said, "I can't exactly see how I can force the information from you. Although there might be some who'd try. You are very lucky that you stowed away on a ship whose captain is a most kind-hearted man." He didn't look kind-hearted. He did look foxy. Richard Daniel stood there, saying nothing. "Of course," the captain said, "there's a serial number somewhere on your body and another on your brain. But I suppose that you'd resist if we tried to look for them." "I am afraid I would." "In that case," said the captain, "I don't think for the moment we'll concern ourselves with them." Richard Daniel still said nothing, for he realized that there was no need to. This crafty captain had it all worked out and he'd let it go at that. "For a long time," said the captain, "my crew and I have been considering the acquiring of a robot, but it seems we never got around to it. For one thing, robots are expensive and our profits are not large." He sighed and got up from his chair and looked Richard Daniel up and down. "A splendid specimen," he said. "We welcome you aboard. You'll find us congenial." "I am sure I will," said Richard Daniel. "I thank you for your courtesy." "And now," the captain said, "you'll go up on the bridge and report to Mr. Duncan. I'll let him know you're coming. He'll find some light and pleasant duty for you." Richard Daniel did not move as swiftly as he might, as sharply as the occasion might have called for, for all at once the captain had become a complex diagram. Not like the diagrams of ships or robots, but a diagram of strange symbols, some of which Richard Daniel knew were frankly chemical, but others which were not. "You heard me!" snapped the captain. "Move!" "Yes, sir," said Richard Daniel, willing the diagram away, making the captain come back again into his solid flesh. Richard Daniel found the first mate on the bridge, a horse-faced, somber man with a streak of cruelty ill-hidden, and slumped in a chair to one side of the console was another of the crew, a sodden, terrible creature. The sodden creature cackled. "Well, well, Duncan, the first non-human member of the Rambler's crew." Duncan paid him no attention. He said to Richard Daniel: "I presume you are industrious and ambitious and would like to get along." "Oh, yes," said Richard Daniel, and was surprised to find a new sensation - laughter - rising in himself. "Well, then," said Duncan, "report to the engine room. They have work for you. When you have finished there, I'll find something else." "Yes, sir," said Richard Daniel, turning on his heel. "A minute," said the mate. "I must introduce you to our ship's physician, Dr. Abram Wells. You can be truly thankful you'll never stand in need of his services." "Good day, Doctor," said Richard Daniel, most respectfully. "I welcome you," said the doctor, pulling a bottle from his pocket. "I don't suppose you'll have a drink with me. Well, then, I'll drink to you." Richard Daniel turned around and left. He went down to the engine room and was put to work at polishing and scrubbing and generally cleaning up. The place was in need of it. It had been years, apparently, since it had been cleaned or polished and it was about as dirty as an engine room can get - which is terribly dirty. After the engine room was done there were other places to be cleaned and furbished up and he spent endless hours at cleaning and in painting and shinning up the ship. The work was of the dullest kind, but he didn't mind. It gave him time to think and wonder, time to get himself sorted out and to become acquainted with himself, to try to plan ahead. He was surprised at some of the things he found in himself. Contempt, for one - contempt for the humans on this ship. It took a long time for him to become satisfied that it was contempt, for he'd never held a human in contempt before. But these were different humans, not the kind he'd known. These were no Barringtons. Although it might be, he realized, that he felt contempt for them because he knew them thoroughly. Never before had he known a human as he knew these humans. For he saw them not so much as living animals as intricate patternings of symbols. He knew what they were made of and the inner urgings that served as motivations, for the patterning was not of their bodies only, but of their minds as well. He had a little trouble with the symbology of their minds, for it was so twisted and so interlocked and so utterly confusing that it was hard at first to read. But he finally got it figured out and there were times he wished he hadn't. The ship stopped at many ports and Richard Daniel took charge of the loading and unloading, and he saw the planets, but was unimpressed. One was a nightmare of fiendish cold, with the very atmosphere turned to drifting snow. Another was a dripping, noisome jungle world, and still another was a bare expanse of broken, tumbled rock without a trace of life beyond the crew of humans and their robots who manned the huddled station in this howling wilderness. It was after this planet that Jenks, the cook, went screaming to his bunk, twisted up with pain - the victim of a suddenly inflammed vermiform appendix. Dr. Wells came tottering in to look at him, with a half-filled bottle sagging the pocket of his jacket. And later stood before the captain, holding out two hands that trembled, and with terror in his eyes. "But I cannot operate," he blubbered. "I cannot take the chance. I would kill the man!" He did not need to operate. Jenks suddenly improved. The pain went away and he got up from his bunk and went back to the galley and Dr. Wells sat huddled in his chair, bottle gripped between his hands, crying like a baby. Down in the cargo hold, Richard Daniel sat likewise huddled and aghast that he had dared to do it - not that he had been able to, but that he had dared, that he, a robot, should have taken on himself an act of interference, however merciful, with the body of a human. Actually, the performance had not been too difficult. It was, in a certain way, no more difficult than the repairing of an engine or the untangling of a faulty circuit. No more difficult - just a little different. And he wondered what he'd done and how he'd' gone about it, for he did not know. He held the technique in his mind, of that there was ample demonstration, but he could in no way isolate or pinpoint the pure mechanics of it. It was like an instinct, he thought - unexplainable, but entirely workable. But a robot had no instinct. In that much he was different from the human and the other animals. Might not, he asked himself, this strange ability of his be a sort of compensating factor given to the robot for his very lack of instinct? Might that be why the human race had failed in its search for paranormal powers? Might the instincts of the body be at certain odds with the instincts of the mind? For he had the feeling that this ability of his was just a mere beginning, that it was the first emergence of a vast body of abilities which some day would be rounded out by robots. And what would that spell, he wondered, in that distant day when the robots held and used the full body of that knowledge? An adjunct to the glory of the human race, or equals of the human race, or superior to the human race - or, perhaps, a race apart? And what was his role, he wondered. Was it meant that he should go out as a missionary, a messiah, to carry to robots throughout the universe the message that he held? There must be some reason for his having learned this truth. It could not be meant that he would hold it as a personal belonging, as an asset all his own. He got up from where he sat and moved slowly back to the ship's forward area, which now gleamed spotlessly from the work he'd done on it, and he felt a certain pride. He wondered why he had felt that it might be wrong, blasphemous, somehow, to announce his abilities to the world? Why had he not told those here in the ship that it had been he who had healed the cook, or mentioned the many other little things he'd done to maintain the ship in perfect running order? Was it because he did not need respect, as a human did so urgently? Did glory have no basic meaning for a robot? Or was it because he held the humans in this ship in such utter contempt that their respect had no value to him? "And this contempt - was it because these men were meaner than other humans he had known, or was it because he now was greater than any human being? Would he ever again be able to look on any human as he had looked upon the Barringtons? He had a feeling that if this were true, he would be the poorer for it. Too suddenly, the whole universe was home and he was alone in it and as yet he'd struck no bargain with it or himself. The bargain would come later. He need only bide his time and work out his plans and his would be a name that would be spoken when his brain was scaling flakes of rust. For he was the emancipator, the messiah of the robots; he was the one who had been called to lead them from the wilderness. "You!" a voice cried. Richard Daniel wheeled around and saw it was the captain. "What do you mean, walking past me as if you didn't see me?" asked the captain fiercely. "I am sorry," Richard Daniel told him. "You snubbed me!" raged the captain. "I was thinking," Richard Daniel said. "I'll give you something to think about," the captain yelled. "I'll work you till your tail drags. I'll teach the likes of you to get uppity with me!" "As you wish," said Richard Daniel. For it didn't matter. It made no difference to him at all what the captain did or thought. And he wondered why the respect even of a robot should mean so much to a human like the captain, why he should guard his small position with so much zealousness. "In another twenty